Politically homeless? You’re not alone

“Politically homeless” isn’t a term the big pollsters use in their questions. But they measure the feeling behind it in several ways, and the readings all point the same way: millions of Americans don’t feel at home in either major party.

A quarter say neither party represents them

In a September 2025 survey, Pew Research Center asked how well each party represents “the interests of people like you.” Asked about each party in turn, 42% said the Republican Party does so at least somewhat well, and 40% said the same of the Democratic Party. A quarter of Americans, 25%, said neither party represents them even somewhat well.

That share is higher among younger adults: 30% of those under 50 say neither party represents them, compared with 16% of those 65 and older. Among independents and people who identify with another party, it is 39%.

More people dislike both parties than a generation ago

In April 2026, Pew found that 58% of Americans had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party and a nearly identical 59% had an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party. Some 26% viewed both unfavorably, up from 21% in 2020.

In 1994, according to Pew’s long-running measure, just 6% viewed both parties negatively. The record so far was 28%, in 2023. (Pew moved its surveys from telephone to an online panel along the way, so small year-to-year changes deserve caution, but the long rise is clear.)

Independents are now the largest group

A record 45% of Americans identified as political independents in 2025, Gallup reports, with 27% each calling themselves Democrats and Republicans. Pew’s own 2026 benchmark survey puts the share calling themselves independents or “something else” at 44%.

Most independents still lean one way. In Gallup’s figures, 20% of Americans are independents who lean Democratic, 15% lean Republican, and 10% lean toward neither party. But leaning isn’t the same as belonging. When Pew asked leaners why they lean the way they do, more pointed to the other side than to their own: 64% of Democratic leaners and 56% of Republican leaners called the other party’s policies being bad for the country a major reason, while 27% and 34% said the same of their own party’s policies being good.

Many want more choices, with caveats

In September 2025, 62% of Americans told Gallup that the two parties do such a poor job of representing the American people that a third major party is needed, close to the record of 63% in 2023. Thirty percent said the parties do an adequate job. Support for the idea has generally been near 60% since 2013, and it tends to rise among supporters of whichever party is out of the White House.

That support is soft in practice. Only 15% of Americans told Gallup they were very likely to vote for a third-party or independent candidate, and 54% said they would switch to a major-party candidate if the one they preferred had little chance of winning.

Pew finds the same mix of frustration and doubt. In late 2025, 37% said “I often wish there were more political parties to choose from” describes them extremely or very well, including 44% of adults under 50. Yet in 2023, only 26% thought more parties would make the country’s problems easier to solve; 24% thought they would make them harder.

Homeless doesn’t mean without views

Feeling unrepresented rarely means having no opinions. More often it means a set of opinions that doesn’t come bundled the way the parties bundle them. Pew’s 2026 Political Typology, which sorts Americans into nine groups by their values, finds four highly ideological, partisan groups. The other five “are more mixed in their political values,” Pew writes. “Together, these five groups make up a majority of the public.”

One of them, the group Pew calls the Left-Out Left (12% of adults), shows how that can feel: 42% view both parties unfavorably, and more than half wish there were more parties to choose from.

That’s the idea behind the nine types on We the Panel: instead of one line from left to right, the quiz looks at your views on the economy and on society separately, because plenty of people are one thing on the first and another on the second. Liberal, conservative, or neither? looks at that mix in more detail.

Why it matters

Feeling unrepresented can turn into sitting out. In Pew’s study of 2024 voters, checked against official voting records, people who lean toward neither party made up 8% of those who didn’t vote, but just 1% of those who did. Their views are real, but they are heard less.

A note on the numbers: Pew, Gallup and other pollsters ask different questions in different ways, so their figures aren’t directly comparable. The trends within each series are the more reliable guide.